"More than 100,000 applications have now been published in the Windows Phone Marketplace and new content is currently being added at the rate of 313 applications per day. At the time of writing, 100,145 applications have been published. Of these, 26,493 were added in the last three months and 9,391 were added in the last month. These applications come from just over 23,825 different publishers." Is there anybody out there who still places any value on these numbers, whether they be for Android, iOS, or WP7? Considering virtually all Android, iOS, and WP7 applications are useless, ugly, buggy crap (with only a few being somewhat tolerable - never actually good, because good software doesn't exist), I honestly don't really care. But hey, another check mark on the list of PR talking points.

I agree, certain functionality should be built into the OS instead of being left to the whims of the app developers. Things that sync like calendars, notes, to-do lists, RSS readers, and so on should be built in. Even esoteric things like LED flashlights and password managers should be a feature of the OS. You can always install a third party app if you don't like what the OS brings to the table, but you shouldn't be forced to go app-hunting for basic functionality.

Sadly though, mobile devices are seen as a cash cow for the people who design the OSes, and we will likely have to deal with "one app per task" for a while yet. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised to see future versions of Android and maybe even iOS that only have the dialer and app store as core software, with everything else a downloadable (and likely paid) app.